An Appointment with Christ: the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1), Part 5

My beloved brothers and sisters, may the Lord continue to bless you. In this session, we are going to continue talking about the Parable of the Sower, which, as we know very well, is found in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Chapter 13. For those radio listeners who are tuning in for the first time and have not been following this series of teachings with us, we are studying this parable of the sower, and through it we seek to compare the different types of people who receive and hear the Gospel and their different ways of reacting to the seed of the word of God.

We have spoken about the person who is like the seed sown by the wayside, who does not receive the word attentively, who does not give it the necessary importance, but is instead a superficial hearer who simply forgets the word; the devil comes and easily snatches the teaching from his mind. And that person continues in his life of perdition because he did not listen carefully, giving the proper importance to the word of God.

We also spoke about the seed that falls on stony ground. This refers to the kind of people who often react enthusiastically, because the Lord says that, since that seed had no depth, it sprouts easily; that is, there is no deep and deliberate process of growth, as there ought to be. Instead, these people seemingly bear fruit quickly and have a great deal of enthusiasm at first. They get involved in the things of the Gospel and perhaps last a few weeks or months, but then the trial comes, and affliction comes, which the Lord compares to the sun shining strongly and intensely upon the seed and scorching it. When trials come, because these people had no deep roots, had no conviction, and had not gone through a process of inner reflection that led them to ask themselves why they truly serve God, because they had not made a powerful, firm, decisive, confident decision, but instead entered the Gospel believing that the Gospel is something easy, that it is a bed of roses bringing us nothing but gain and enjoyment, that it is a spiritual picnic, so to speak—when trials and difficulties come, these people realize that things are not so easy. Then they lose heart, become discouraged, lose interest, and, because there was no conviction, very soon we see them disappear, never to be seen again in the ways of the Lord.

And in our last meditation, we took time to talk about trials in the ways of God, and I believe we were quite clear in saying that, many times, in the things of the Gospel and in the believer’s life, situations of trial and difficulty will come; bitter experiences will come. Far from this suggesting God’s unfaithfulness or the falseness of the promises of the Gospel, quite the opposite is true: it is often an indication that God is working in our lives. For God will often use trials to purify us, to strengthen us, to test us like gold, as we were saying, in order to bring out the most beautiful qualities that are hidden, buried, and obstructed within our being. Trials often bring out in individuals the most beautiful traits—traits they did not even imagine were inside them. That is what the human soul is like. And God sometimes has to allow discipline and trial to come in order to bless us and strengthen us. But if we are not prepared to understand that this is part of God’s unusual blessing in our lives, we are going to take off running, as people say, turn away from the Gospel, and forget that wonderful blessing God has prepared for us if we are faithful.

Unfortunately, many people believe that entering the Gospel means saying goodbye to problems, and that is very far from the truth. The problems that come from God, or that God allows to enter our lives, are blessings in disguise. If we receive them with obedience, humility, patience, and faith, we will emerge from them blessed, strengthened, purified, and stronger than ever. Then we will enter into the beautiful blessings God has appointed for those who believe in Him. So let us not be like the seed that falls on stony ground, which the sun scorches and which, because it has no root, quickly withers.

There is a third kind of seed: it says that some of the seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew and choked it. And the Lord gives His own explanation of this, saying that the one sown among thorns is the one who hears the word, but the cares of this age and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. That is, there are people for whom hearing the word is like a seed being sown in a place with a great deal of undergrowth, with many harmful plants that bear no fruit and are destructive to the seed. They consume the nutrients that ought to go to the seed, and what they produce are harmful, destructive things, like thorns that prick and cause harm and bear no fruit at all. Rather, it is a plant that has no value, productivity, or usefulness of any kind.

There are people who are precisely like that, and the Lord says that these are people in whom cares arise when they receive the word: the cares of life consume and kill the seed and do not allow it to bear fruit. What did the Lord mean by this? There are people who love the world so much, who are so consumed with cares, so immersed in the interests, struggles, and ambitions of the world and in the projects of life, that they consider the Gospel, the things of the spirit, and the things pertaining to eternity to be empty mysticism meant only for idle, superficial people who have nothing to do.

For them, the Gospel is for elderly, decrepit, and poor people who have no great causes for which to strive, who are not fighters, who are not successful. Unfortunately, this is a lie of the devil that only leads those who accept it to perdition. In fact, the Bible speaks about a man: the Lord Jesus Christ told a parable about a very materialistic and wealthy man who one day found his barns so full of produce, of wheat, that, not knowing what to do, he asked himself, “Well, what am I going to do now with all this produce? I no longer have anywhere to put it.” Then he said, “Ah! I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to tear down these barns, which have now become too small for me, and I’m going to build larger barns so that they can hold more wheat, more produce.” And the Word says that, that very night, they came to this wealthy man, who cared nothing for spiritual things but only for material things, and said to him, “Fool, this very night your soul will be required of you”; that is, you are going to die, and everything you accumulated—whom will you leave it to?

It is a sad picture of so many people who spend their lives trying to build their world here on earth. They are excessively concerned about their profession, about making money, and about succeeding according to their superficial understanding of the concept of success. Their cares, interests, and affections are all confined and limited to the affairs of this world. That is why the Lord speaks about the cares of this age—that is, the affairs of this time, this era, this system. That is the only thing that concerns them. A person consumed with cares is a distraught person, a person excessively focused on one single thing. You see that there are people like that.

I remember that not long ago I was speaking with an ambitious young man who wanted to make a great deal of money. This young man looked troubled and anxious, and while I preached to him about the importance of seeking the things of God, his eyes darted from side to side in an almost compulsive and distressing way. While looking elsewhere, he said, “The thing is, I don’t have time to go to church. I don’t have time to concern myself with the things of God because I have to work too much. There is a lot of money to be made out there. I have so many projects in mind that I don’t have time to set aside a moment to go to church.” And it was evident that this young man was unhappy, nervous, full of anxiety, and lonely. And it saddens me because there are so many people like that in this world who, perhaps not in such an extreme way, certainly consider material things much more important than the things of God. But God wants precisely the opposite: He wants us to focus our attention on the things of the spirit. I hope you are not like that kind of person, and I will continue talking about this in our next session because our time is running out. May the Lord bless you.